Kardinal Offishall, Shontelle and Akon perform at the China Club on December 1, 2008 in New York City.


Actor Andy Garcia, actress Sharon Stone, musician/actor Justin Timberlake and actor Samuel L. Jackson attend the 23rd Annual American Cinematheque Awards held at the Beverly Hilton on December 1, 2008 in Beverly Hills, California.


Tina Turner performs during her 50th Anniversary tour at Madison Square Garden on December 1, 2008 in New York City.


Kevin Ross, producer Dallas Austin and actor Terrence Howard attend the Rowdy Collection Spring preview party, hosted by Dallas Austin and featuring DJ Ruckus, at Kustom NY on December 2, 2008 in New York City.


Actor LL Cool J (L) and singer Taylor Swift speak during the Grammy Nominations Concert Live rehearsals held at Nokia LA Live on December 2, 2008 in Los Angeles, California.


Oprah Winfrey and Susan L. Taylor attend an intimate celebration of Susan Taylor's 37 Years at Essence magazine at a private residence on December 2, 2008 in New York City.


Exclusive Polaroids of Britney Spears' 27th birthday party at Tenjune on December 2, 2008 in New York City.


Estelle performs live at Melkweg on December 2, 2008 in Amsterdam, Netherlands.


Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman attend 'Australia' photocall at The Ritz Hotel, on December 3, 2008 in Madrid, Spain.


Gray is the color of the day for Reese Witherspoon, who stops traffic Tuesday after reportedly lunching with a friend in Brentwood, Calif.


David Beckham gets a traditional Maori welcome from the Te Waihono A Kupe performers Wednesday at the Auckland Airport in New Zealand. The soccer star's team, the L.A. Galaxy, are taking on the Oceania All Stars this weekend in Auckland.


They're on a mission! Sarah Jessica Parker and 6-year-old son James Wilkie are on the lookout for the perfect Christmas tree Tuesday in New York City's West Village neighborhood.


Jessica Alba (in Dolce & Gabbana) makes a stunning entrance Tuesday at the launch party for the 2009 Campari calendar in Milan, Italy. The new mom says gracing the pages of Campari's famous calendar (of which only 9,999 copies are made) allowed her to "play out this sort of bombshell."


Hats off to Heidi Klum for adding a shot of glamour to the grand opening of Victoria's Secret's new flagship store on Tuesday in New York City. The supermodel recently strutted the catwalk in the lingerie brand's annual runway show, which will air Wednesday on CBS.

Kevin Federline has been called many things in the nearly five years since Britney Spears walked into his life: boy toy, gold-digger, wannabe rapper, partier. These days he answers to one name: Daddy.

Since splitting with Spears in 2006 – and then watching in fear as she went through her very public breakdown – the former backup dancer, 30, has channeled all of his energy into their sons Preston, 3, and Jayden, 2. (Federline also has two kids, Kori, 6, and Kaleb, 4, with ex-girlfriend Shar Jackson, 32.)

Now that Spears, 27, is getting her life back on track, they're sharing parenting duties again – and Federline is ready to tell his side of the story exclusively to PEOPLE.

Do you remember when you first met Britney?
I met her at a club in Hollywood, Joseph's. Our eyes met and that was it. We just hit it off right away. I learned real fast how much of a whirlwind the press and everything was.

What are your happiest memories of the marriage?
Well, getting married. I never thought that I would get married but it wound up happening. That was a really, really, happy, exciting moment. I pretty much realized that I was giving my life to her, and I was doing it without question.

What went wrong?
It's hard enough to be in a marriage, and then have a kid, then kids, it changes everything. For me, I'd become more concerned with my children. Not that I ignored Britney, but my kids are always most important ... I mean, we were having complications. I didn't give her an ultimatum, but I was trying to work stuff out with her, and she didn't even talk to me or anything and went behind my back and filed [for divorce]. [I was] completely blindsided.


A lot of people assumed you fought for custody of the kids because of money.
My first question to [my lawyer] was, "Am I ever going to be able to see my children?" I told him that I would spend every last dime that I had to make sure that my children are okay. That's all that mattered. I didn't know how much power Britney had. That really scared me.

How did you react in January when Britney locked herself in the bathroom with Jayden and was later taken to the hospital on a gurney?
That whole night is a blur. You want to talk about one of my lowest points of depression, that was probably one of them. I was very, very worried for her 'cause I care about her. That's the mother of my children. Just because I'm not in love with her doesn't mean that I don't love her. I'm definitely rooting for her. There's nothing more that I want than for her to be in the best health and doing what she loves to do.

Are things getting better?
Oh, man, it's totally turning around. It works out that [the kids] get to see her. There's structure over there, there's structure at my house. We're trying to keep the same type of schedule. It doesn't have to be completely perfect, but the foundation is there.

Jessica Alba shows off her body-after-baby in the 2009 Campari calendar, and PEOPLE has a sneak peek of the pictures that the actress says allowed her "play out this sort of bombshell."

"I'm usually walking around in comfy clothes, with a baby on my arm," says Alba, 27, who welcomed daughter Honor Marie Warren in June, "and it's nice to dress things up and feel sophisticated, sexy, and surrounded by so much beauty."

Campari is printing only 9,999 copies of the calendar featuring photos of Alba in swimsuits, high heels and evening wear. The calendar will be distributed at the end of the year. – Mike Fleeman

Rosa Parks was her No. 1 fan, and Martin Luther King, Jr., called her the queen of American folk music. Odetta's stage presence was regal enough: planted on stage like an oak tree no one would dare cut down, wearing a guitar high on her chest, she could envelop Carnegie Hall with her powerful contralto as other vocalists might fill a phone booth. This was not some pruny European monarch but a stout, imperious queen of African-American music. She used that amazing instrument to bear witness to the pain and perseverance of her ancestors. Some folks sing songs. Odetta testified.

Her death on Dec. 2 in New York City at 77 from heart failure, coupled with that of South African singer Miriam Makeba three weeks ago, writes finis and fulfillment to 50 years of pursuing self-determination through song, of spreading the word through music. For a handful of black singers, their discography is an aural history, centuries deep, of abduction, enslavement, social and sexual abuse by the whites in power — and of the determination first to outlive the ignominy branded on the race, then to overcome it. In her commanding presence, charismatic delivery and determination to sing black truth to white power, Odetta was the female Paul Robeson.

Born in Birmingham, Ala., on New Year's Eve, 1930, and raised in Los Angeles, Odetta Holmes had a big voice early on; she was schooled in opera from the age of 13. Appearing in a tour of the musical Finian's Rainbow in her late teens, she started to lend her classical and musical-stage training to the folk repertoire around 1950. Like Harry Belafonte, Leon Bibb and Makeba, Odetta played the swanker nightclubs before the big (mostly white) folk-music surge kicked in later in the decade. Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues, the 1956 Tradition LP with definitively scalding interpretations of "Muleskinner, Easy Rider" and "God's Gonna Cut You Down," announced the arrival of a voice whose sonic and emotive power could raise the dead and reach the deaf. During the folk boom, each Odetta gig, in coffee house or a concert hall, was a master class of work songs, folk songs, church songs, and an eloquent tutorial in raw American history. Identifiable from the first syllable, her voice fused the thrill of gospel, the techniques of art song, — the wisdom that subtlety sometimes trumps volume — and the desperate wail of blues. If a line could be drawn from Bessie Smith to Janis Joplin, from Mahalia Jackson to Maria Callas, it would have to go through Odetta.  Her resonance was literal, political — few civil rights rallies of the early '60s were complete without an Odetta rendition of "We shall Overcome" — and cultural. "The first thing that turned me on to folk singing was Odetta," Bob Dylan once said, and listening to that Tradition album helped persuade the young rocker to switch from electric to acoustic guitar.

Odetta returned the favor in 1965, recording an LP of Dylan songs with an emphasis on the antiwar numbers rather than Dylan's sheaf of civil-rights ballads. In later years Odetta collaborated on a dozen or more albums (dueting with Nanci Griffith, for instance, on Other Voices, Too. She recorded a collection of Christmas spirituals, and did tribute albums to Ella Fitzgerald, Leadbelly and blues thrushes of the 1930s. In her 60s and 70s she still could sing the hide off a traditional number. Evidence: this rendition of "Midnight Special."

For Odetta and many other survivors of the Civil Rights Movement, the election of Barack Obama as president signaled a fulfilling chapter in the struggle. As she sank toward death in New York City, Odetta had an Obama poster taped on the wall across from her bed. Hospitalized with kidney failure on Monday, she kept willing herself to live because, her manager Doug Yeager wrote on a fansite just before her death, "Odetta believes she is going to sing at Obama's inauguration and I believe that is the reason she is still alive."

She sang of the past, and for the future. Come Jan. 20, her songs will be heard on the internal iTunes of the people she touched. Some voices can never be stilled.

President-elect Barack Obama unveiled his national security team at a press conference in Chicago on Monday. Obama said, “The time has come for a new beginning, a new dawn of American leadership to overcome the challenges of the 21st century. We will strengthen our capacity to defeat our enemies and support our friends. We will renew old alliances and forge new and enduring partnerships.”

Obama named former rival Hillary Rodham Clinton as his choice for secretary of state and said he would keep Robert Gates as defense minister as the incoming administration seeks to wind down the U.S. role in Iraq.

Washington lawyer Eric Holder was named attorney general and Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano as homeland security secretary. He also announced two senior foreign policy positions outside the Cabinet: campaign foreign policy adviser Susan Rice as U.N. ambassador and retired Marine Gen. James L. Jones as national security adviser.

"Circus"


"Womanizer"


"Interview"

After a premiere in Los Angeles late November, "Cadillac Records" brought the glam to New York. On Monday, December 1, the drama musical saw a star-studded screening event being held at AMC Loews 19th Street in the Big Apple, where stars from Beyonce Knowles to Kelly Ripa were spotted.

Though missing out on the signature red carpet, the premiere extravaganza was still attended by Knowles' co-stars, Adrien Brody, Columbus Short, Eamonn Walker, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Gabrielle Union, Mos Def, Chyna Layne and Jeffrey Wright. Producer Sofia Sondervan and director Darnell Martin also made time to come to the event.

Beside all of the film's cast and crew, celebrity guest, like Akon, Ne-Yo, Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, Carmen Ejogo, Mark Consuelos, Tamara Tunie and Elsa Pataky, have also been seen among the attendees. Hip hop mogul Jay-Z was also spotted coming to the evening event alongside wife Knowles.

"Cadillac Records" is directed and scripted by Darnell Martin. It is a drama musical chronicling the rise of Chess Records and its recording artists that include Muddy Waters, Little Walter and Howlin' Wolf. It will come out to the U.S. big screen on December 5.

Here's a brand new Kanye West produced track from Jay-Z that will appear on the official soundtrack to Notorious, the upcoming Biggie Smalls movie! The soon-to-be classic film hits theaters in January! Do you think this will land on Jay's upcoming BP3 album as well?

Jay-Z - "Brooklyn (We Go Hard" Feat. Santigold (Link#1)

Jay-Z - "Brooklyn (We Go Hard" Feat. Santigold (Link#2)

Fresh video for Brandy’s second single "Long Distance" which was directed by Chris Robinson. It was writted and produced by Phillip Lawrence and Bruno Mars. Her fifth album, Human drops December 9th.

Halle Berry accessorizes her casual looks with a luxe Cartier "Marcello" satchel while traveling and at home in L.A.


Forget the boyfriend jean – Cameron Diaz sticks to her favorite distressed flared jeans for casual days out in L.A.


Transformers star Shia LaBeouf keeps his footwear comfortable and constant in a retro pair of PF Flyers sneakers.


From the red carpet to the streets, Jennifer Garner keeps her all-American style with James Maternity "External Graphite" jeans.


Never one to shy away from an outrageous shoe, Victoria Beckham adds height in stiletto platform Christian Louboutin suede booties everywhere, from the streets of L.A. to the London airport.


Zac Efron makes for a mighty fine travel buddy, but Vanessa Hudgens relies on her chic Botkier "Morgan" fringed satchel to get her belongings around the world.


Even a growing bump can't hinder this fashionista's sense of style. The mom-to-be totes her Mulberry "Mabel" bag all over New York City.


Jessica Biel loves her pink shirtdress so much that she has been sporting it for more than a year. We first spotted her wearing the dress while enjoying time with Justin Timberlake in Norway in June 2007, and she's still rocking it this week in L.A.


Gossip Girl's youngest star shows off her edgy style off-screen in her Hollywood must-have Members Only bomber jacket while out and about in New York City.


Though Britney Spears is busy promoting her new album Circus, the pop star keeps her boys close to her heart wherever she goes with a "Key to My Heart" sterling silver and Swarovski crystal pendant necklace engraved with her sons' names. Get Britney's two-pendant Key to My Heart necklace, $74, at keytomyheart.net.